


Event Horizons

by teaandchess



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Original Character(s), Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-11 10:02:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11146182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaandchess/pseuds/teaandchess
Summary: A canon divergent from the beginning of S8. In the battle against Crowley to close the Gates of Hell, an unexpected sacrifice brings an unexpected responsibility to Castiel. Struggling with emotions he is unused to experiencing, his grief leads to an unlikely friendship.





	Event Horizons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ElocinMuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElocinMuse/gifts).



> elocin-muse- Prompt: Based off what Rachel said during ChiCon, in that she’d like to see Meg sacrificing herself for Cas. Sealing the gates of Hell. Cas is going to seal them from the inside. Meg does instead. (Why do I do this to myself?)

_Dust devil swept you away/It’s still not real/Ash and urn and silence/Talk to me/Dust devil swept you away/My recollections are all that’s left of you/Swirl and sway/Without me- Puscifer, ‘Horizons’_

* * *

 

“Sometimes you are just too good to be true, Clarence. A regular old guardian angel,” Meg shouts just before she buries her stolen blade into the throat of a monster, her voice carrying over the roar of demons and magic. One of Crowley’s creations, it is an odd minotaur-like creature that screeches in her face before exploding out in a shower of black blood. It sprays out over the angel sword and onto her clothing. “That’s disgusting. I just stole this outfit.“

Slightly nauseated by the guts and black blood, she wipes her hands on her jeans and turns her stare back to the angel standing closer to the altar.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Castiel answers as he parries a blow from a demon and then slaps his hand down on its forehead. It howls as he burns it from its husk, eyes shimmering for just a moment before it finally drops to the ground. When he turns towards her, the question on his lips, Meg spots another monster appearing just behind him that he’s apparently forgotten or thought dead.

“Course you don’t.“ Her fingers curl into a fist and the creature screams as her power twists through it and then breaks its already extended neck. The angel flinches a little at the sight and sidesteps its falling body. "Just all matter of martyr, aren’t you? This was your great plan since the boys clearly can’t wrap their heads around the spell? Keep fighting until we’re taken down in the end?”

Castiel huffs importantly and advances on her in a swirl of power and overcoat, almost oozing that divinity that normally made demons quail. Barely intimidated, Meg simply folds her arms over her chest and stares him down as he comes toe to toe with her.  His own frown letting her know he’s irritated by her quips at last. 

 _It’s about damn time,_ she thinks wryly, _I’ve been waiting since Crowley smoked out to try find another body after Cas burned that ugly fuck._

They’ve been arguing the entire time they’ve been fighting the remnants of Crowley’s forces; well, she’s been arguing and he’s been trying to ignore her barbs. Her fingers tap impatiently on her arms, drumming a rhythm that nearly matches the loud booming sounds of a spell starting to work around them. 

“You’re a demon, you can’t understand the meaning of sacrifice, remember?“ he counters after a moment and Meg’s jaw tightens.

“I knew you’d bring that up. Why am I even bothering trying to explain any of this to you? You’re like a child anyway.”

Immediately, they start bickering in hushed tones. They nearly look like an old married couple on the verge of a monumental argument. Castiel steps closer and Meg steps up into him, not backing down from his challenging posture. When he gets like this he always looks formidable but she’s too used to all his angelic righteousness to be frightened by him now. The bodies of the demons and monsters are forgotten as they resume their usual argument about who is more selfish or ignorant.

It might have looked normal enough for them if it isn’t for the swirling reds and blacks of Hell’s Gates just behind them. The intricate woodwork and metal would have been beautiful if it wasn’t for what the threshold held off through the raised portal. The sounds from within are familiar to both angel and demon but for different reasons. Castiel remembers it from when he had helped retrieve Dean from its depths, while Meg remembers the centuries of torture she has been forced to live through again and again. 

But with their argument getting louder and louder, they are forgetting what they’re standing in front of. 

“Hey!” Dean’s voice slices through the tense air and they both look at where the two Winchesters are trying to recite the spell Kevin is struggling to decipher for them. It requires the vessels of angels to speak the scripture and they settled into their roles happily, but a bickering pair of supernaturals is hard enough to listen to.

Meg and Castiel both turn in comical unison to stare at him.

“Do you two mind? We are trying to close the gates of Hell here.”

“Oh clever. Would have been good if we finished the homework before the test, don’t you think?”

“Cute, bitch. Do you have a better way?” Dean demands of the demon when she turns her dark eyes on him.  

Kevin clears his throat and his eyes fly over the tablet he holds. “Guys… there’s a problem.”

Everyone stares at the youngest member of the group and he’s barely able to meet their eyes, exhaustion making him sag against Sam for support. “The spell will hold but the only way to close it is to spill blood on the other side to finish it, an… influence of otherworld power to force it. We can keep the chanting going but it has to be over there.”

“Life for freedom,” Castiel breathes and Meg slams her elbow into his ribs. The loud grunt he makes is hardly angelic.

“What did I say about poetry, Clarence?”

He glances at her, knowing what he has to do, and then suddenly moves for the Gateway. He’s almost there when they all look away from Kevin and see the angel standing at the portal.

Dean and Meg both stare, at a loss. “Castiel, don’t!” Dean whispers when he realizes what he was doing. His throat tightens up, closes over words he can’t say, and he can’t move take a step forward, not when Kevin still needs his protection from Crowley’s rallying forces. There’s already demons howling for their blood as they fly through the hallways.

The angel gives him an impossibly kind, almost affectionate look. Everything he means to say shows in that simple exchange. “Keep going. I can do this. I owe this to you all.”

Then he is gone through the doorway, inadequate good-byes left behind, and Dean stares, tears rising in his eyes. It was too like the angel to do something so brave and stupid and leave only a few words behind.

“Cas…”

He looks over at where Meg has been left alone and jumps when he realizes she is gone once more. He’s not sure what to make of that but he looks back, trying to see Castiel in Hell’s Gates.

“Dean, come on. I need you on this,” Sam whispers, reaching out and taking his brother’s arm to bring him back. “We can do this but I need your help.”

~~

Castiel does not remember this part of Hell and he knows Hell with an uncomfortably clear perception. It is incredibly hot and still, like a furnace ready to be stoked and then set aflame. Nothing like the Pit. There are no screams in this gate and no souls begging for him to save them.

The shadowy plain has, of all things, a doorway and the darkness of where he stands is relieved by that sliver of light. Through the gloom, he can see Dean and Sam reading the spell and he smiles at the sight of them. His steadfast Winchesters, he thinks fondly as he fingers the blade now safely holstered at his side. 

His brothers.

“I still don’t get how you can be as old as you are… and still be a complete dumbass.”

The sultry drawl makes him jump and spin when Meg appears beside him, form materializing out of the darkness of Hell. He can only stare at her scowling face upturned toward him, her fury making her eyes black and her lips pulled into a thin line.

“What are you doing here?”

“Oh I just needed a getaway, just us two away from the kids and the dog. What the hell do you think? I’m getting you out of here so I can think of something else.” Meg gestures at the darkness and they both can hear Hell itself starting to rumble at the effect of the spell. “You stand out. Always do. Hellhounds are going to be ripping through reality to get to you to tear you apart here.”

“I can outrun them.”

“By doing what? Going from one side of Hell to the other? Letting them tear apart that pretty meatsuit? For all eternity?” She rolls her eyes up. “You can’t leave here, Castiel, if you do this.”

“I know. I’m ready. I’ve been ready for this moment for a long time. You need to get out of here, Meg. The spell won’t harm you, if Kevin altered it like he said he would.”

“Why…” Meg growls and then with a groan throws her hands up in the air. “God, Castiel!”

“Hardly,“ he admits with a smirk.

“Don’t get cute. We need to get out of here. Not just me. You too.”

“I need to do this, Meg.”

“To what? Protect the Winchesters? Those boys have been protecting themselves for years, so what’s another ten?” she grumbles, sounding like a petulant child, and her hand reaches out to tug on his sleeve. "Seriously. You have such a…”

“To protect you as well.”

He’s never seen her look more stunned than she is now. Her mouth stalls on the words she’d been about to say and her eyes are wide as her head tilted to the side. Castiel gives her a weak smile, glad to have finally shocked her.

“You’ve run your entire life. I’m giving you a chance to prove what you could be if you don’t stay on the outskirts. Just… leave the Winchesters alone.”

“You’re doing this to give everyone a chance at redemption? Hell, you are such an angel,” Meg mutters.

Castiel smirks again, amused at her almost childish annoyance. “That’s an easy way of looking at it.”

He sighs and looks around at Hell’s ghastly interior. “I hope one day you’ll understand what it’s like to… care… for something enough that you want it kept safe for eternity. Your friends and your… allies. That you’d be willing to lose your freedom for them. I don’t know if this will affect you or not but I’m willing to try to keep you out.”

When he looked back at her, he saw understanding just hiding under her darkness.

“You damn fool,” Meg manages bitterly, looking away. Castiel can hear, even through the bend in reality, the spell starting to reach its crescendo and he feels Meg’s hold on his coat slip until she’s now gripping his hand. Sharp nails scrape his knuckles and he realizes that she is trying to hold onto him, trying to pull him to the other side.

“Cas…”

Her use of his nickname nearly breaks down that resolve he has held onto since they entered this place and he reaches up to cup her by the back of her head. When she turns to argue with him, he kisses her the way he has needed to do since her return from Crowley’s prisons. They’ve touched, taken comfort from each other, but not like this. Castiel tastes darkness and vengeance in one moment and then anger and sadness in the next, as if her emotions are for once lying on the surface. He combs his fingers through her dark curls and shudders when she slides her other arm around his shoulders. He’d almost forgotten what kissing her in the heat of the moment is like. Meg stands up on her toes to take more of his mouth, pressing herself into him as her fingers grip his coat collar tight. He wraps his arms around her, as if to absorb as much of her as he can to last the eternity he’ll be trapped within Hell’s barriers.

It’s an utterly human moment but he lets himself have it.

When they break apart after a long intoxicating moment, she sighs heavily against his mouth and opens her eyes a little. “If you’d kissed me like that every time we fought, our last days together wouldn’t have been spent just arguing and fighting with the occasional romp thrown in, you know.”

He holds her a little tighter, reaching with one hand to touch her necklace. “I know. But I don’t regret those moments.”

“Me either.” She sucks in a breath and he feels her lips nuzzle the soft pulse under his jaw. “So I hope you can forgive me.”

He closes his eyes, not wanting to ruin this with last minute confessions. “I can try.”

“Good.”

Before he can think to move, she reaches into his holster and pulls his angel blade out, embedding it in his thigh with a twist of her wrist. He screams in pain as he goes down, an unexpected agony tearing through him when she twists the blade and then yanks it out again. Ignoring his grasping hands, Meg nearly drags him towards the doorway. Her wild grin is tainted by sadness; before he can demand to know what she is playing at, she leans down to give him a brief kiss that is as painful as the realization Castiel suddenly feels. Her fingers tug hard on his dark hair, like always, and she bites his lower lip.

When she lets him go, she wrenches her necklace off her neck and drops it into his hand.

“Bye, Clarence. It’s been a ride but I got a war in Hell to win. Don’t let me down. Be a good little guardian angel now.”

Taking advantage of his shock, she shoves him back through the doorway halfway. He snatches at her hand to try to stop her and feels her yank on him. There’s no stopping her but he still struggles to pick himself up. Meg slicing her wrist open as the spell reaches its final chant, her smile now oddly serene despite what is about to happen. 

When she sees him watching, still clutching his wounded leg, she winks and whips her arm through the air so her blood sprays over the top of the door-way. Meg’s laugh is joyless and utterly evil. 

_“I’m coming for you, Crowley. Time for a war on our turf.”_

  Her head rocks back and the laugh is lost in a loud howls, a plume of grey smoke exhaling out of her mouth and into the shadows. Meg’s stolen body goes limp and sags forward into his arms, and the weight of it throws him out of Hell’s Gate as smoke swarms and shoves at him until he is thrown out of Hell itself.

He screams again, a loud piercing sound that sends the hellhounds baying and under those high-pitched note the demons being sucked into Hell scream with him.

~~

Neither Dean nor Castiel is sure how the eldest Winchester knew to be ready to catch him when he falls back out of the portal. Neither care. Dean crumples under the combined weight of the angel and the limp human but he wraps an arm around Castiel and keeps him from slipping on his own blood. The dark haired angel moans and twitches in agony, his injured thigh bleeding out as his grace struggles to heal him. The moment he is able to turn over, the leg is almost forgotten as he strains to crawl back to the gate. Dean lays the girl on the ground, not sure why Meg is unconscious and not caring when Castiel is struggling to get back to the closing gates.

Determined to stop the demon, Castiel manages to get to the threshold when the hunter tackles him to the ground. “Cas! Stop!”

“She’s going to get herself trapped,” Castiel snaps, trying to fight him off. Muttering for him to stop fighting , Dean wraps his arms around Castiel’s waist to hold him back and the angel sags a little in defeat when he realizes the Gate is closing.

“What are you talking about?”

“Meg…”

Once again, a loud whooshing sound and immediately the red lights and swirling shadows that linger in the Gate go still. A shudder rolls through the portal, causing rusted hinges to creak and groan, and a strange stillness in the air that had not been there before grows. Kevin falters in his chanting and they all stare, wondering if something has gone wrong. 

An explosion of light bursts through the gateway, sending them all to their knees as the blinding force becomes hot and fierce. But for all its power, the wind is not targeting the humans. The screams of demons intensifies as Hell locks itself in, a million souls being drawn through the air and into another plane of existence. When Dean tries to open his eyes, he can only see a thick smoke swarming around them more dense and hot than any he’s known before. It’s hot and stings at the flesh, the clawing of demons trying to stop their descent into a home they all hate.

For a closing of Hell it almost seems melodramatic. 

Only Castiel can bring himself to stare as he hopes, deep within some forbidden part of his mind, that the spell has not worked. That at any moment Meg will coast through, possess her body again, and call them idiots for getting the spell wrong again.

Only when the light clears and the portal suddenly implodes on itself in a tiny flicker of red light, everything in the room is eerily still.

“Did it work?” Kevin finally finds his voice, hoarse from too much chanting, “I can’t tell.”

“Me either…” Sam had been holding on to the prophet to help him stay upright and the exhausted young man looks up at him when he lets go. “But if we’re all still standing and no demons are attacking us right now… I’d say we were in the clear.”

He looks back at where Castiel kneels on the ground, Dean’s arm still wrapped around his shoulders. The angel has his blue eyes fixed on where once the Gate to Hell was open. Now the Gate is shut and the frame is plain rotted wood once more.

“Damn you,” he whispers, his voice utterly broken and defeated.

Sam moves down the altar steps to the angel and his brother, reaching out to help them up. “You guys okay?“

Dean looks over at Castiel and shakes his head. “Why’d she do that, Cas?”

“Not like Meg to sacrifice, is it?” Sam puts in and Castiel shoves them both away when they try to help him. He gets to his feet, ignoring the screaming pain in his leg, and starts to limp towards the closed Gate. Dean leans on Sam and stares.

“Cas?”

But the angel doesn’t answer, simply stares at the necklace in his hand. “Because she understood. She didn’t tell me once that she did… but she must have.”

The brothers looked at each other, confused. Sam shakes his head at Dean to not push it. Rather than ask uncomfortable questions, he bends down to the unconscious woman Castiel pulled through. Dean takes a minute to look as well and no one is  sure if she’s alive or dead.

It’s Kevin who walks over to the angel, not affected by the emotions he seems to exude. Unlike them, he’d been able to see beneath the surface a long time now. He knew what had been going on between Meg and Castiel for sometime. Had seen it coming.

“If there’s a way,“ he offers at first and Castiel shakes his head. “Castiel.”

“There’s no way. That’s the point of it, right?” The angel has gone stone-faced, impassive and distant, as he looks around the room. “No ins and no outs. Hell is closed forever. She knew what I was going to do…”

His voice drops off,  cracking a little, and Dean limps up beside him. There is only a moment of hesitation before he puts his hand on his shoulder and squeezes. “I know, Cas.”

The angel looks at him and then away, not able to stand to see pity on Dean’s face. Of all people to give him pity over a demon, Dean is somehow the one he can’t face.

“So what do we do?“ Sam’s bewilderment is clear. “We’re not even sure this has actually worked.”

Gingerly touching the deep cut on his own shoulder, Dean can only shake his head. "No idea, Sammy. Cas?”

With a flutter of wings, the angel is already gone and leaving nothing behind.

The brothers exchange another look.

“What’s happening?“  demands a voice like Meg’s though softer and younger, and the girl in Sam’s arms turns a little. They all look at her, Dean noticing her eyes are confused but not frightened. He stares for a moment longer than he should because he can’t get over the change he can see in these first moments. "I… she’s gone?”

“Yeah, you’re free now,“ Dean muttered as he kneels in front of her, wiping the soot from her face. She stares at him, jaw clenching as if she’s biting back words when he checks a deep cut on her wrist. Half-healed, it is going to scar he can tell.

“I never wanted to…” Her eyes are already starting to close. “I don’t remember much. I’d been about to jump off that bridge when she found me…took me…”

  Her lips purse, thoughtfully, and she reaches out to touch the sword at her side, a sword the demon had been gripping.

“The angel?”

Don’t ask, sweetheart, is what Dean wants to say but Sam is already shouldering him out of the way. 

“He’s gone for now but he’ll be back to heal you. We need to get out of here,” Sam orders, ignoring her protests to pick her up. After a brief struggle, she goes as limp as a ragdoll. Her tiny body tucks into his a little, pale skin waxen with exhaustion and her fingers tight in his jacket to hold on.

“Aren’t you just a cupcake?” she mutters, eyes drooping tiredly. Sam blinks in surprise but she’s already asleep.

The brothers look at each other and know that they now have another responsibility put on them by the demons. Another life that was nearly pulled apart. Kevin doesn’t comment, knows there is nothing to say, but he helps Sam with her anyway.

~~

The Impala rumbles along the interstate, a lone black car running slower than usual. It’s been a quiet night, as if the entire world knew that a battle to protect it had been waged and won, as if the entire world is taking a moment to relax. No other cars pace the Impala and Dean is glad for the quiet. 

Gives him time to think about the problem of the people occupying his back seat.

Castiel has returned, still radiating a grief they’ve never seen him show before. There’s no real flutter of wings or clap of thunder to herald his arrival. He simply appeared in the middle of the back-seat with Kevin and the girl, so quietly that neither woke up. Sam remained sound asleep as well, has been dead to the world for hours now with his body cramped uncomfortably, head pillowed on Dean’s jacket. The only person who hasn’t needed sleep yet is Dean and he doesn’t flinch at the angel’s sudden appearance.

But his silence makes him more than a little uneasy.

“What’s the word, Cas?” Eyes dart up, checking his rear-view. Castiel somehow looks scruffier and worn out, and he doesn’t meet Dean’s green eyes through the mirror.

“No demons remaining on Earth. It worked.” 

Dean stares at his reflection for a moment longer before he looks away. “You look like Hell.”

“So I imagine.” The angel shrugs indifferently and then looks at his right. Dean can hear his sharp inhale. “Why is she here?”

There’s an accusatory note in his voice, as if Dean has done this deliberately to hurt him, but the human pushes that aside as grief. If the angel needs it, he’ll give it to him. After everything that has happened and all they nearly lost… he looks at Sam, sees the battle wounds still bruising his face, and knows he’s lucky that their only loss was a temporary ally. 

But no power on this earth would drag that from him willingly.

There’s a second and he realizes that he didn’t have to say it outloud.

One look back in his mirror lets him see Castiel’s tightly held expression and he knows his friend is well aware of his thoughts.

“Meg left the meatsuit behind but the soul she took over from is still there. She’s not happy about it either. Said Meg broke a promise to her.”

“Did she say what?” Unable to help himself and aware that Dean is watching him carefully, Castiel runs his eyes over the brunette. Sees features that are both familiar and yet strange to him.

“That if she let Meg use her body, Meg would get her to Heaven. She didn’t want to be here. Meg picked up a suicide case. Probably thought it was easy pickings so she wouldn’t fight too hard.”

Dean can hear, even under the music, Castiel’s soft sigh. It is a heartbreaking sound from the angel. “That would be like her.”

“We’re not sure what her name is. Some sort of amnesia from being possessed for so long.” Searching eyes flick to the back-seat again. “You okay?”

“Of course I am. We won.”

Dean looks back at the road. “Yeah but not all victories are ones we want.”

Castiel doesn’t answer and Dean simply turns the volume up on his music, knowing the last thing Castiel wants is to talk.

For his part, the angel tries not to stare at the girl who is now leaning into his shoulder. He should heal her; he’s an angel after all. Castiel pities the human soul that had been trapped inside her own body but in this numb sensation of grief he can’t remember why he should care. 

_What reason is there to stay?_

The Winchesters? Yes, of course, but eventually they’ll be gone, no matter his protection. Now he’s lost someone he hadn’t thought to lose. He should be able to slough that off, remember that Meg is a demon, but his heart isn’t into retreating back to angelic sensibilities.

He’s been ignoring those for so long now what would be the point in going back to them now?

_Dean said the girl had lost her memory._

Reaching out, Castiel very nearly touches her forehead before he yanks his hand away. He can’t bring himself to touch her, not even for the sake of learning her lost name, and he turns away to look out the window instead. 

~~

They stop for several hours so the humans can sleep and eat, but the only one not sleeping in the rented room now is the girl. Once again, Castiel finds himself in charge of Meg’s meatsuit, much like the old days when the Winchesters had said he was responsible for the demon if he didn’t want her dead. Sam doesn’t listen to a word of his protests that he has other thing to do and before he can argue the Winchesters and Kevin are asleep and of no use.

He’s left with a human staring at him as if he is some sort of overly large bug. That wondering look makes him uncomfortable and Castiel nearly shoves her out of the room. Her fist clenched around a few bills she has taken from Dean’s wallet, Meg’s meatsuit almost seems to float beside him and Castiel finds it impossible to look at her. 

The wound is still too fresh and he’s not felt its like before. 

So he stares straight ahead as he escorts her towards a diner and knows it is better to get this over with. 

“Are you going to hate me?” she asks the moment they set foot on the pavement. Castiel jumps at the sound of her voice and his hand actually grips the blade he’s taken back. Used to Meg’s drawl, he’s not accustomed to such a playful, almost light tone tinged with an accent he can’t place. Though Dean has taken the time to try to learn who she is, she’s not done more than nod and smile at him and the others. The girl stares up at him as if he was the most fascinating thing she’s ever seen and for an eerie second Castiel remembers a similar look from a demon in the middle of Holy flames.

He has to rip his eyes away from her before he does something foolish with a lost human. The minute that thought springs to mind he throws it away as stupid nostalgia.

His angel sword almost sings as he re-holsters it. If she noticed the slip up, there’s no sign. 

“I’m an angel. We don’t typically hate humans.”

“Fine… are you ever going to introduce yourself properly then?”

“I’m Castiel and you know that already,” he forces out curtly. “Dean was saying you don’t remember your name but I am sure you know mine.”

Easier to go back to how he once was around humans when he barely knows the eyes staring back at him.

He opens the door of the diner and gestures for her to go in front of him.

She shrugs a thin shoulder and out of the corner of his eye he sees her bite into her lower lip. “Might have been Mary, might have been Abby… it’s all fuzzy so let’s go with Abby. Mom was a teach I think, something artsy, hated me going out to LA to act…”

Her stomach suddenly growls, a snarling sound that makes her blush and put her hands on her belly to try to keep it quiet. “God, I’m starving.”

Leaving Castiel behind and wading through the surprising midnight crowd of truckers and tourists, the girl is in one of the diner booths before he can stop her, already eagerly looking over the menu. He’s exasperated but there’s little choice. He simply watches her closely as he follows, looking for signs of similarity.

Of anything that might say the demon was still in there, just hiding.

Being in a booth and not at the counter is poor choice. He has to sit across from her and see a face he’d grown fond of. But the creature running it is no longer the demon that Dean often referred to as his ‘pet project’, and that seems more unsettling. He can only stare at her, knowing that it’s impolite, and see only fractions of what he wants to see.

The girl orders a coffee and burger and then looks back at him once the half-asleep waitress leaves. She flashes him a beaming smile that catches him off guard, makes him even more anxious and his eyes drop to his hands on the table. 

He doesn’t see her smile turn into a sad wince.

“Look, I get it. You didn’t think she’d sacrifice herself for the sake of screwing over Crowley,” the girl called Abby says before he can try to make some stilted conversation. “But if you want the truth, she hated him far more than anyone else. Never let me know the reason why either.”

“She never told anyone the reason.”

“Precisely. Must have been something big. Or she just really held onto a grudge.” She pauses when her coffee arrives. The tired waitress makes small talk with her, covertly inquiring if she is travelling with her husband. Before Castiel can bite out a few choice words, he’s left dumbstruck when the human neatly deflects the question with an intricate story that he can barely follow. Something about a car, going against her mom’s wishes and hitchhiking, and the waitress admonishes her in a friendly way that the girl laughs about. But the moment the older woman is gone her face is again sombre and she can’t meet his eyes.

Her hand shakes as she holds tight to her coffee cup while stirring in far too much sugar. Realizing that he’s not about to make chit-chat, she takes a long sip before speaking, “You can’t keep staring at me like I’m about to get possessed. It’s freaking me out.”

“I apologize, I just…” Castiel stops abruptly.

“You lost someone you cared about,” Abby points out with a matter of fact look. Her eyebrows arch in a familiar way though her eyes are pitying. “Is that supposed to be easy?”

Castiel can’t find an answer that would be good enough for the petite human staring at him and he watches her turn to look out the dark window. There’s a vulnerable line in her that wasn’t in Meg; he can see it in the way she props her chin on her hand and sighs as if she longs to run from the diner. He suddenly feels more uncertain around this world weary girl than he has around the Winchesters or Meg in a long time. This one has been intimately intertwined with Meg, even though she would have been in a haze, and she would have heard every word they had spoken to each other, felt every intimate touch, experienced every pain and every emotion the demon had let escape.

She also knows Meg better than he did and that somehow feels more dangerous when he still is grieving for a demon. It hurts more than his grief for Balthazar or Anna, for any of his friends or family, and he doesn’t want to question why.

They don’t speak again until the waitress puts the plate of food before Abby and leaves them alone again. The girl gives the burger a once-over of almost desperate hunger and Castiel thinks she looks like a starved kitten finally offered a meal. But she catches him staring at her and puts her hands down in her lap and looks at him instead though he can tell she is wanting to sink her teeth into the food.

“What?”

“Did she…" he stops himself with a snap of his teeth and Abby stares back at him. Taking in the wavering turn to his lips, she knows what he wants.

“Care about you? Like you? Love you?” A thin shoulder lifts again and then falls in defeat. “I guess it’s possible. Everything is still so hazy, you know? Kind of like watching a really long movie and then having to remember plot points that no one else can point out. I mean, she thought about you a lot in the end and wanted you too. I know she didn’t want to lea…” There’s a stutter and those chocolate brown eyes read the desperation on his face easily. “But she’s always been about the fight, she told me. It’s why she wanted me.”

She nudges the plate impatiently. “Why she left me.”

He looks down at his hands and Abby leans toward him, head tipping. Her smile is oddly affectionate.

“You… loved her?”

Scoffing, Castiel lifts his head to look out the window. “I cared about her. We were friends when we shouldn’t have been but that does not constitute love.”

Abby’s eyes slide over his face. “Right.”

The eye roll she does is definitely Meg.

As if that is all she wanted to discuss, she turns back to her food in silence, clearly aware of him watching her again, but she eats with the unconscious delight of a happy child. Castiel can’t help but watch as she voraciously eats as fast as she can without getting sick, remembers his own brief touch with hunger. It’s sympathy that makes him order her another burger when he can tell how hungry she still is after nearly finishing. She doesn’t bother to thank him, ignores the look on the waitress’s face when she delivers the second meal, and simply eats in silence, no longer trying to pull him into conversation.

While he was thankful at first, the longer the silence drags, the more it disturbs him. Abby simply finishes her meal and then pushes the plates away, leaning back to stare at him. The silence stretches out, neither wanting to break it, and the hum of the diner doesn’t make a dent in the awkwardness. Her empty coffee cup rattles when she touches it with a finger, her eyes flicking over his face.

“You okay, Clarence?”

His eyes shut in pain. “Please don’t call me that.”

“You know why she called you that?”

“Beyond mocking me?”

“Well, there’s that. Seems like that was real easy to do.” She leans forward a little as if to share some deep secret. “But you really do act like a guardian angel sometimes, Castiel.”

He can’t match her steady gaze, just looks down at his hands again as if he can read his future in his own palms. Blowing out a stream of air, she stands up from the booth and leaves some bills on the table. She doesn’t wait for him to get up, sliding between truckers and tired travellers alike to get out. Knowing Dean won’t let him hear the end of it if she gets hurt, Castiel sighs before apparating outside so he doesn’t lose her. He opens the door for her and to her credit she doesn’t flinch at his sudden reappearance. She simply thanks him and then leans against the railing by the steps when he joins her.

Castiel is aware that he is very much out of his element and he begins to wonder if Sam and Dean have done this deliberately. To let him see the difference between demon and human, and Castiel admits that the differences are no less startling than the similarities. It is as if Meg had adapted parts of herself from her meatsuit, and the human has taken parts of the demon’s personality as well. The same odd way of talking to him to force him to think, the same exasperated way she’d roll her eyes. It confuses his ability to tell them apart and he knows he should fly away right now before it’s made worse.

But the Winchesters expected him to take care of her and he has to stay until she’s sent back home.

“So, what are you going to do now?” the girl asks the angel at her shoulder. Sighing, he tilts his head back and stares at the night sky as if hoping for an answer. But none come to mind and he finally looks at her upturned face.

“I don’t know.”

_But I don’t think that staying around you is a good idea. You’re on your own._

~~

They all call her ‘the girl’ because Castiel can’t stand to call her anything else just yet to her face.

It takes days before she remembers just enough about where she lived before. Something in her doesn’t want to remember whatever happened to her in LA so they go back to Cheboygan, but Dean drives straight through to the small house she grew up in. 

The abandoned sign and boarded up windows should have been a warning.

The dead bodies of a man and woman they find stuffed in the closet puts a heavy weight on them all. Not Meg’s doing, they can tell, but the unfortunate victims of Hell’s warfare they can only assume. There’s no where left and Dean and Sam both feel a heavy weight of responsibility.

Dean doesn’t explain to them but there’s no need. He told Sam about being visited by Meg Master’s ghost and he doesn’t want to deal with another guilt added to his conscience. 

The girl is pulled away from her grief and in the end, they simply put her with Benny. The vampire is leery of company but short of delivering her to Garth along with Kevin to live in an overly crowded houseboat, there’s not much choice. She simply shrugs and agrees, but there’s an unsettled feeling about her that even Kevin has noticed. 

But settling on having Benny keep her at his place, they have every intent on leaving her to hunt monsters and that is not a task for a rookie, Dean explains to her. Though she happily agrees, they all notice the bravado she showed is just that: a show. They’ve all underestimated how badly broken she was made because of the tortures and visits to Hell, that odd happy smile of hers is an incredible mask. 

She’s frightened but not about to show it.

No wonder the demon had chosen her; she’s a consummate actress though she’s unaware of it and she’s good at it. 

Dean never comments about it, but even he pities the girl when she dreams in the back-seat of the Impala and cries out against tortures she can still feel.

When they leave her at Benny’s place, Castiel sits in the back of the Impala without another thought as they start to drive off. Getting over being reduced to nanny for an amnesiac, Benny offered her a job in his tiny Louisiana diner setting, should be easy for her to fade into the background, and Sam is satisfied though Dean remains troubled. Still, when Castiel glances out the window he sees Meg standing there and it burns far worse than it should that he’s now without someone besides Dean or Sam. The brothers have each other and he has them but there’s a gap between them still that Meg had helped fill with her caustic presence.

Inevitably, it is why he starts visiting Benny and her.

Twisted and wrong, and he knows it, but he does it under the pretence of making she is no longer possessed. The girl never questions it and at first neither does Benny who has started to take her under his wing. Within a matter of weeks, the vampire is oddly protective of the girl and since she works for him the angel never can grill her for what he needs. But Castiel manages a constant stream of questions with only a little bit of awkwardness and finds out she remembers far more than she let on of the demonic devices left over by Crowley and Meg during their wars. 

Things that keep cropping up in the hands of monsters and when the connection is made, he goes because the Winchesters want him to find out more.  

He only visits on Sundays closer to midnight when the diner is nearly empty, and though it goes well in the beginning, eventually even he notices when she starts leaving early to avoid him. So he starts arriving earlier to catch her and she stays.  Benny watches him subtly interrogate her and says little at first though he is always present.

But he warns him one evening not to push too far when Castiel wonders where she is on a rare day off. The empty diner lets them speak freely enough.

“The girl likes you.” Slicing up a red tomato for one of his sauces, Benny doesn’t even look up. “That’s bad considering what you’re doing. You’re causing problems for me.”

Castiel bristles at the implication. “You’re saying I’d hurt her? She’s human. Nothing like you.”

  The vampire lets it brush off his shoulders, used to the angel’s unwitting insults by now. “I don’t mean physically, Auntie. I mean she's… vulnerable. You don’t get it but if her possessor had a thing for you then she might have one too. She doesn’t want to either, just for your information. She’s about ready to run.”

The vampire turns away to toss the tomatoes on the fryer and misses the change on Castiel’s expression. It takes him a second to understand and another to wipe the look of horror from his face before it can be seen. “That would be disastrous.”

“You don’t say. Man, you are slow to catch up sometimes.” Benny finally looks up while he wipes the knife on a towel. “Whatever happened to her? It’s made her valuable to the Hunters for what she knows about monsters and about the artefacts leftover by the demons. The boys must have let it slip. I’m getting calls all the time from hunters wanting to know what’s in her head for this or that, as if she is some sort of oracle for them, and it ain’t fair to her. I stopped asking a while ago. You should too.”

“If she can be of use…”

Benny bares his fangs in primal anger. “You don’t listen to her screaming herself awake, Castiel, after you leave. You don’t see what she does to herself to make sure she is in the real world. So leave her alone until she’s ready.”

They stare each other down, an angel who could rip a mere vampire to shreds, and Benny looks away eventually from that impenetrable blue gaze. Castiel eventually just stares at the diner counter between them and wishes himself anywhere else.

But he feels guilt over letting Meg occupy that body for so long now, a guilt he doesn’t want because at the same time he wants the demon back there. It makes him feel selfish and he knows angels should never be selfish. The girl has never said a word about her memories. She’s always been helpful enough to anyone who asks her and seems to think he won’t hurt her.

The difference between her and the demon, he supposes. This one seems to trust too easily.

~~

Knowing better than to push on Benny’s good nature, he leaves them alone for several weeks until Dean and Sam insist on visiting Benny about a cult of vamps starting up. Castiel uses it as an excuse to visit and watches for the first time Dean treat the girl like a human. He transitions to it easily, flirts with her and the girl bats her eyes and flirts back as gamely as she can. Sam just rolls his eyes and asks how she is and she counters neatly with a few sarcastic barbs that make Dean grin in appreciation and Sam go red.

That sudden throwback to Meg makes Castiel disappear with Benny to hunt for a few hours.

When he comes back, Dean pulls him aside to ask if he’s noticed anything odd about the girl. It’s easy to claim he doesn’t notice anything but he knows there is. She looks impossibly sad beneath the facade of a cracked smile, and he knows it could be the final chain for the Winchesters wanting her to stay here. So he studies her at a distance to try to see if maybe she’d better away from the South, back nearer to her distant relatives.

Doubts start to gnaw.

Benny’s grown attached though and he promptly shields her against the less insightful way Dean and Sam try to question her. Still, she smiles up at overly protective Benny, tells him it’s okay, and then her eyes go to Castiel and the smile fades.

Castiel just watches and decides to stop visiting when he sees her cave in a little inside, sees her almost cling to the vampire for support when she has a moment where she loses herself in memory. Whatever goes on in her head, he decides to avoid ever pushing to know.

~~

Six months go by after Meg’s sacrifice and there is still no demons but so many battles with monsters that he loses count. The creatures have figured out they are once again at the top of the food chain and controlling them is almost worse than controlling demons. He hasn’t visited Benny or the girl since that moment in Benny’s tiny house that he saw her smile, and eventually his melancholy is nearly his downfall. He gets lazy, gets a bit unhinged and he pays for it. In a fight with two Alphas trying to make hybrid monsters that look like a hideous werewolf mutt, he gets swiped badly by the monsters. The injuries the Winchesters suffer through makes him retreat with them instead of staying to finish the creatures off.

The closest spot for them to run is Benny’s. 

He would have gone further but Dean can only drive so far and he’s not about to leave his Impala where a monster can hurt ‘her’. Castiel never has known why Dean gives his car a sex and he’s not about to ask questions when he brings them to the small rickety diner and house. They’re too badly hurt and he’s still too weak from the fight to risk making it to Garth’s instead.

Dean’s quirks are forgotten when he passes out in the car and nearly drives it into Benny’s back shed.

He can’t blink out on a badly injured Dean or Sam even to avoid her face.

Benny is there to help make sure the boys don’t turn and Castiel gratefully helps him through the first night, both aware that she is watching and learning. She even has the equipment all ready and the vampire eventually lets it spill that he has been teaching her about monsters so she can protect herself. Her knowledge of the otherworld makes her a problem for many monsters still struggling to establish their hierarchy. There might as well be a massive target on her back and it is obvious that she knows it. Benny’s kept her from hunting but he comments to Castiel as they hold Dean down and pour liquid silver on his wounds that she’s been restless since the last time he visited. 

It makes the normally stoic Benny uncomfortable but he teaches her how to fight bigger opponents anyway. So she can take care of herself if she has to.

He’s sure now that she’s healed up that she’s about to sprint off into the world again and he likes her too much for her to be chased off by an angel with a complex.

~~

“Stop calling me that,” she snaps on the second night of Dean and Sam have to be strapped down. Benny has to feed so she’s been left in charge of their guests. But after the fourth time of the angel calling her by a rather distant moniker, she’s ready to fight. Castiel finds himself utterly cowed for a second by her anger and he ducks his head to avoid her stare. 

“I have a name. Use it or get lost.”

“You said you don’t remember your name, that you don’t think the one you told me is the real one anyway,“ he tries and they pause to hold down Sam while he screams at the burning in his veins.

“Benny decided we should stay with the name I remember. Figured it was fitting since I can’t go back,” she says once the big man is back to whimpering. “He’s been calling me Abigail, Abby for short. Remember?”

“Fine.“ Sam kicks hard and Castiel finally gives up on arguing with her. “How exactly do you plan on watching them through the night, Abigail? Especially if they grow violent?”

He spits out the name as if it is vinegar in his mouth and she sighs, thoroughly exasperated by now.

"You’re like an overgrown child,” she mutters while she tranquillizes Sam once more and his twisting body slowly goes lax. They both let him go and she looks at Castiel with pity in her eyes. “Just like she said.”

“Don’t speak of her to me,” he warns, all at once formal and drawing his angelic power around him.

To her credit, she merely stares back at him and resembles a mouse facing down a cat. He could kill her without a thought right now and they both know it as plain as the blood staining their hands.

When she looks away, he hears her take a deep, shaky breath. “Then grow up, get a pair and help me.”

The whisper makes him take hold of Sam and bathe the wounds again, swatting her hands away when she tries to correct him. Still muttering to herself, Abby pats Sam’s face with a gentleness unlike Meg and her hands brush his as she helps check the stitching on wounds that won’t close no matter the angelic healing he tries. But her attention is for Sam alone and he watches her, trying to see Meg beneath the layers.

After a moment, Sam moans and falls into a deeper, more natural sleep, and she shakes her head.

“They were hurt real bad. What did this to them again?”

“Some sort of hybrid. The monsters have been restless since we closed the Gates.” He watches her forehead crinkle a little. “Benny said they’ve been lurking around here?”

“Sometimes. He tends to take care of them and only a few werewolves tried to bother me.”

Castiel notes the way she hunches her shoulders a bit and clenches her fingers into fists. “What happened?”

“I stopped them from bothering me.” It’s said as if it is nothing and he wonders if it is. Thanks to Meg’s alliance with the Winchesters, she was seen as a traitor because of her dealing with the hunters and no doubt some of the monsters have held onto that. They wouldn’t see it as survival. They’d see it as betrayal since many of them had alliances with demons and she knew many of their nests. 

Her fingers go still on Sam’s stitches and he realizes she’s been staring at his side while he stared at her hands.

“You’re hurt.“ She pokes at the blood-soaked dress shirt and he winces when he notices after all the concern about not letting Dean or Sam turn into monsters he’s been bleeding out. Nearly impervious to pain when he sets his mind to it, Castiel can suddenly feel the hot stickiness on his flesh. Before he can stop her she’s unbuttoning his shirt and checking the wound with a few prods that are far too gentle for his liking, ignoring how twitchy he is because of her touch. With a flex of power, he’s already healing, not wanting the attention, and she watches the flesh fold over and glow. 

“Cool trick.”

Letting him go, she manages to leave a phantom coolness from her hands but he steps away as if she’s burned him. There’s no point in reprimanding her, Castiel figures, since she’s already ignoring him and mopping the sweat from Dean’s forehead. There’s something off in the way she moves now, a sort of coiled tension, that makes him glance at her covertly as he tries to use his power on Sam again. The wounds are resistant but the blood flow and infection is nearly stopped at least.

“They need to rest. Come on.”

Castiel decides to retreat the moment he is out of the temporary sick room but she doesn’t give him long enough think of another location.

While Meg was explosive but timed it perfectly, the human has less control. She rounds on him the minute they leave the bedroom and impossibly her tiny frame backs him right up in the wall. Castiel stares down, bewildered as her face hardens into a pale mask of anger and she hits him hard in the chest before grabbing a handful of his overcoat.

“Why do you keep coming back if you hate me? I know Benny told you to stop interrogating me, thank God, but you can leave at any time from here. Hell, why do you keep letting me help if you don’t want me to?” she demands and though she steps close to try to intimidate him, he simply glares down his nose at her.  

“I don’t hate you,” Castiel says very slowly, as if she is merely some ignorant human. He grinds out the next words to try to make them stick. “I’m an angel. I don’t think of you at all, girl.”

Castiel regrets it the moment he realizes what he’s done. Something about her expression makes him feel like he’s kicked an already wounded animal. If anything, she grows smaller. The dark eyes shadow, the lips tighten as she steps away just a fraction of space, and he knows he’s gone too far. Dean always curses his inability to know the right thing to say and this time he feels it like a blow to the head.

Then the familiar expression of anger returns, chasing away the hurt, and Abby squares her shoulders up like she is charging into war.

He’s prepared for her anger. He’s not prepared for her fingers tightening in his coat and pulling him close, for her legs to slip between his as she pushes up into his chest and kisses him with a sweetness he’s unused to. There’s aggression but she’s nervous and her kiss unsure. He wants to push her away, knows he should, but he hesitates, lets her kiss him and he pushes his mouth into hers just a little. Before he can do more than return the pressure, she breaks away with a low sob and shoves him back.

“Yeah that felt like you don’t think about anything at all.” Abby nearly melts against the wall beside him. Her head lifts and rests back against the wall.

He touches his mouth, feeling the sting of a bite when she pulled away too fast with his lip still between her teeth.

“God this hurts. You’re screwing with my head. Worse than she did.“ She waves a hand. "I know every bit of you but I don’t. So damn confusing, it’s like she’s still in my head. Especially since you wanted the demon and still want her back. I hate her, hate you…”

Castiel can only watch her as she disappears into the back-room, confused and disorientated by the rapid change. Leaning against the wall where she left him, he looks at the ceiling in utter perplexity. 

_Humans. Why can’t I find one that does what it should?_

“She wants you,“ a low, growling voice says suddenly from a dark corner in the kitchen. Benny’s Southern drawl snaps Castiel out of his stupor and he spins around to face the vampire. Benny is staring at him, eyes narrow and teeth still showing in that primal way he likes to use.

“She thinks she does. She’s better off wanting Dean or Sam for what she has in mind,” Castiel says cruelly. Truthfully he has no idea what she wants. He doubts she knows either.

“I’m a vampire, Auntie. We can smell stuff like this. You and the demon reeked of it for months before you ever did a thing about it,“ Benny sighs, "and my best wager is a type of Stockholm Syndrome.”

Castiel gives him a look and the vampire puts his hands up. “She was with Meg a long time. Naturally they adapted something of each other. But you aren’t helping her decide what is real and what is Meg still influencing her. You know what possession does to someone. Can you imagine what your own ride was feelin’ at any given point?”

The light-bulbs overhead crackle though he doesn’t move a step towards Benny. 

“So I’m givin’ you an ultimatum here, Castiel.” The vampire’s eyes are deadly when he comes into the flickering light. “Either you stay away or I’ll make you stay away. She’s like a little sister to me, a family I don’t often get to have. The girl is good for me, keeps me honest and I haven’t wanted human blood in months. So I won’t have her runnin’ away because of some emotionally repressed angel. She’s done that too long and it got her in a world of trouble the first time. She’d be ripe for any monster wanting to learn about the Winchesters and we both know she remembers a lot of Meg’s time with you all.”

They’ve not squared off over anything since Purgatory and Castiel lets his blade slip to his hand. “Do not threaten me, vampire.”

Benny doesn’t move to arm himself. Knows it won’t be much use anyway but he’s willing to risk Castiel’s anger. “Take a real good look at yourself, angel. You’re wallowing, dragging others down with you, and you don’t even know it. You’re being as cruel as the rest of your kind can be. You need to learn to grieve but don’t you dare make the Winchesters or Abigail suffer alongside you. Won’t be worth it.”

He gives the angel a pitying look and leaves to check on the back-room.

~~

Castiel disappears for weeks after that confrontation. Ignores the movements on Earth for that part of Heaven he loves so much. Spends time lying in the grass and imagining a million different ways the last years could have gone. So many different endings and yet everything always came back to regret.

Sometimes the other angels approach him but mostly they leave him alone. The ones that do get the nerve to speak to him ask questions, far too many questions. His alliance with a demon maybe broke his mind, some think, while other gentler souls such as the cherubs point out that love is worth acknowledging. That sort of thinking is exactly is why he avoids the cherubs.

He was not in love with her. Demons did not take love and angels did not give it to wrecked souls.

That belief holds for days in Heaven until he sees the happiness of one of Heaven’s newest souls. The old man weeps as Castiel watches him find someone he loved that died long before he came to Heaven. The embrace of the souls makes him recoil a little and he stops visiting other versions of Heaven.

It all falls apart around him one night when he is alone staring into the impossibility of Heaven and seeing nothing that moves him any more that way obsidian eyes did in that last moment. 

For the first time, he leaves Jimmy’s body in a safe haven in Heaven and sits alone, staring at the cosmos in his true form. The way he used to when he was young and just a mere soldier. In the end, he grieves for everything. For Anna, Balthazar, Gabriel, Raphael and the rest of his cursed family, for the Winchesters and Bobby Singer, for their friends, and for a demon who chose sacrificing her freedom to allow for his. 

The angels leave him alone to this strange thing called grief and he sits for long hours by himself trying to find warmth in God’s creation again.

~~

Only a whispering prayer intrudes on that slice of grief he’s allowed himself.

The call brings him back to Earth and it takes him days to find them at Benny’s place yet again. Not because he is out of practice but because he feels worn down and travels slowly. Dean barely bothers with niceties beyond a ‘Where the hell have you been?’ before he lets him know that they’ve been going under a civil war between the monsters. In the tiny town where Benny’s made his home, an Alpha had tried to lay claim to the quiet solitude and between Benny and him a turf war erupted that caught everyone in its crossfire. It got ugly fast, the Winchesters only pulling in when blood has already stained the ground and Benny is barely left standing though victorious. 

Castiel can only just meet the vampire’s steady gaze when Dean brings him in to his house where Sam is trying to patch him up.

“You done doin’ what you needed to do?” Benny demands the minute they shake hands and Castiel nods, knowing what he means. “Good. Then you can go get her and be quick-like.” His back arches as Sam wraps his bloody leg stump with gauze just as Dean pulls the angel out to the kitchen. “Cause these boys don’t have gentle hands.”

It makes Castiel smirk when Sam tells the vampire to stop acting like a baby but his mind is already wondering what the vampire meant.

Dean leads him through the house, gesturing to the destruction. “He thinks she’s run off.” 

“What happened exactly?” Castiel traces his finger over the bloody machete embedded in the bathroom door. Vampires; they never did figure out cleaner methods. 

There’s a twitch to Dean’s mouth and he blinks. “You really were out of the loop, huh?”

“I’ve been occupied, yes.”

“Alpha figured out that Abby meant something to old Benny, tried to take a nibble.” Dean’s grin is oddly affectionate. “Little girl took the head off his second in command when they tried to take her and that’s when Benny decided to fight. She left when the Alpha’s head was lopped off. Been a long couple of days, could have used your help.”

He ignores that comment. “So why did she run?”

“Beats me. But I’m thinking it has to do with her figuring out she’s high-liability to someone like Benny right now. So she’s set off to do whatever it is that people do when they think they are going to hurt someone.” Dean’s fingers point back at Sam’s hunched figure. “They run to avoid hurting anyone else.”

Castiel knows. He’s done it himself often enough to his own family. “I should retrieve her then, before the Alpha’s remaining pack hunt her down.”

“Be a thought. The Fanged Princess in there got all finicky when I said maybe we should let her disappear, so I think she’s his family whether she wants it or not. I’ve seen Benny upset. It isn’t pretty, you know?”

“I can imagine. I’ll see what I can do.”

Dean flicks his eyes up to meet Castiel’s stare. “You okay? It’s been a year today since…”

“I’m fine. I’ll be back.”

He’s gone in a flutter and Dean sighs, staring at the empty space. “If you say so, Cas.”

~~

It takes him far longer to find her than he thought could be possible. A week longer than it should but she knows a lot of tricks by now, from Meg and from the Winchesters. Hiding from angels  is a cakewalk to her.

She’s in the middle of nowhere Montana, walking an old highway headfirst into a cold, snowy wind, when he arrives in a crack of thunder. Annoyed that he’s been duped by a human for such a ridiculous amount of time, he stares at her from across the road until she slowly becomes aware of him. Her shoulders straighten, her fingers fiddle with the side bag she holds, and her head turns sharply like a deer sensing a threat. She’s oddly attuned, Dean says, and it likely comes from Meg.

The hunter was oddly proud that she was able to slice off a vamp’s head to help Benny but Castiel is furious she was put in harm’s way like that. Furious that no one was there to stop her from fighting or from running.

Abby rocks back and forth on her boot heels as she stares at him and he stares back, fists clenched at his sides. Her body shaking, it becomes clear that she’s not wearing enough for winter walking but she faces him down as if they are in the middle of a duel. There’s a brief moment when he’s sure she is going to take off down the road. He’s ready to tear into her for running from safety when she almost flies into his arms, seeking warmth from the cold. Cold hands burrow under his coat and he feels her step closer to get away from the wind, her face pressing into his shoulder. Even her breath is cold. 

Stunned, because not even Sam or Dean show him emotion like this, he doesn’t touch her in return until he sees words in old Latin knifed into her neck. A vampire’s mark to find its prey, he figures angrily, and the bruising is still fresh. Lifting dark curls now tinged with red dye out of his way, he smoothes his hand down her neck and feels the skin heal over beneath his fingers.

“I was about to pray to you. To see if you’d come and take me back to Benny. Running away doesn’t… feel the same anymore.”

The slim shoulders shift under his grip and Castiel feels the urge to escape suddenly pounding through him now.

She’s as dangerous as Meg is, if not more so because she’s not as forbidden to him as a demon was.

“They sent me to find you.”

“And you came though I know you don’t want to. You’re something else sometimes, guardian angel.” She laughs and he feels the vibrato go through her slim body. “Maybe she was right in thinking you were a masochist. You should have just let me stay here to learn my lesson.”

When her head lifts, and an apple shaped face with its impossible stubborn jaw and large eyes shows through the snowy wind, Castiel feels an instinctual tug he’s not felt in months. One a demon taught him to discover for himself. The hand he has on her neck runs down beneath the collar of her jacket and against the cold skin of her collarbone. This is wrong, he knows, but he stoops and kisses her. His lips fit against hers and he feels her sigh when her mouth opens under his. Her fingers are pulling through his hair, tugging hard to bring him closer to her as his arms wind around her tiny waist and lift her up. For a fraction of a moment, it is just a simple human girl kissing an angel out of gratitude and an angel kissing a human out of relief. 

Then in the next moment it is Meg in his arms, biting at his lip and wrapping herself around him.  But it’s not and his entire being knows it. There’s no smoky aftertaste, no darkness that makes his entire being prickle with want and hesitation, but an odd sort of passive harmony that relaxes him. 

He breaks away because it’s too much to compare darkness and peace. However, his arms stay anchored around her and he realizes how easy it would be to let her fall into him for comfort, the way he’d fallen into Meg for companionship.

 _Stupid_ , he thinks he hears Benny’s voice in his head, _just plain stupid._

The stare he’s given is wide-eyed and wondering. Her mouth is curved in a slight smile and for a moment he wonder who he’s betrayed. Meg or Abigail. The demon or the human. And he’s not sure which he feels worse over. The sudden gnaw of guilt at the pit of his stomach is nauseating.

He’s an angel, not a human, so where did this sudden guilt come from? 

Abby’s eyes go cold when she sees his open remorse.

“I’m sorry,“ he just manages before her hand goes over his mouth, her palm ice cold over his still warm mouth.

“Just take me back to Benny. He’ll be ready to kill me anyway.”

Even though every tense muscle in her body warns him she wants to run, Abby holds his hand until he zaps them back to Benny’s back shed. But when she goes to let go he holds on and turns her around to try to make her listen. Benny is badly injured and seeing her agitated might make it worse.

“This is not easy for me to explain but I’m an angel.“ He blurts it out like a sticking point and she blinks up at him like a tiny owl confused. "You need to understand that whatever you are feeling is confusion.”

“You think I don’t know that? You barely even know that!“ She tries to get him to let go, twists as if she is caught in a snare that will choke her if she stays too long. "I am so batshit crazy right now because I know everything I’ve done and yet it wasn’t _me_ who felt these things, who did those things that are going to get me killed in the end _.”_

 _“_ You…”

“And I hate it. I hate it all. I want it gone but if it goes I don’t know anything of who I am,” she finishes and he lets his fingers pinch her arm a little, trying to ground her. She punches his arm ineffectually but he releases her anyway.

“I’m sorry.” 

“Stop saying you’re sorry,” Abby grinds out, “because I don’t think you are. You don’t know how to be. You’re an angel, like you said. You took your vessel, breathed promises of grace and heaven, of doing the work of your God, and then put him through torture. Dissected his memories for what you wanted, took what you needed, put him through Hell though you claimed it was for Heaven. You’re no different from the demons.”

Her anger rises off her like a tangible odour, like a wave, and he backs away from her, stupefied by this slip of a girl. Each step toward him is threatening now and he finds the wall of the shed against his back before he can dodge her. No human has ever caged him so easily and he half expects her to strike him.

“How are you any better? You ride their vessels, chain their souls to you while giving only half a care to what you do to them. And for what?” Her red lips curl over her lips feral-like and deadly, and he can almost smell the simmer of fury beneath her skin. “God’s Word? Which you don’t even think is followed anyway. You are all alike. Demon and Angel. You only care for what you’re made for: war. You’d use me too for the sake of a memory you can’t admit to because you’re too righteous. You’re pitiful and you’re cruel when you lose what you want.”

She does punch him across the face, hard for her and barely a whisper to him, but he turns his head anyway to try to give her some satisfaction. But there’s no pleasure in her eyes while she clutches her fist to her chest, bravely trying to hide the pain of now bloody knuckles. 

“You use us, and then when we fulfill our end of the bargain you push us even further until we fade.” Her fingers are swelling so she cups them close to protect them, but Castiel can’t look away from her eyes while she searches his face for a thing she can’t find. Something in her face closes up and she walks to the other side of the lean-to, sitting heavily on the moist ground. Her legs draw up towards her face and she rests her cheek on her knee, eyes shutting.

“No wonder God gave up on you all.”

Such words from Dean or Sam would have had him shouting back, fighting them, beating them to pulps before healing them out of guilt. He just stands and stares at the brunette who can’t look at him anymore. 

It’s a hard realization that when Meg left, she not only left him behind but a soul that had been depending on her to go to Heaven. Unlike Jimmy whose growing resentment eventually became loyalty, Abby threw herself wholeheartedly into the possession in return for nothing but a little bit of hope. She’d trusted the demon in a moment of weakness, when Meg was more than devoted to Lucifer. She had still expected a demon to hold up her bargain and maybe Meg would have in the end, would have figured out a way, before she ran out of time. Before she chose to fight her war eternally in Hell. The demon had evolved but the soul she had rode alongside was now stuck with an invisible chain that bound them. He doubted she dreamed good dreams.

Whatever innocence was in this girl was almost perverse because she wanted so much to forget what her body had been part of. The wars, the tortures… Meg had gone to Hell but in a way she’d left this soul to deal with her own version of it.

That seems more sickening than it should be to an angel.

There’s a moment where he nearly blurts out his thoughts but Castiel just stares at the girl and realizes why Meg liked her so much. The demon loved pretty things, she’d told him one night, but Meg was too strong to want anything but strength in return alongside the prettiness. The broken girl from Cheboygan is stronger than she knows and it radiates from her alongside her pain. For a moment, Castiel loves her for it with the same admiration he’s carried for Dean and Sam, with the same passion he ended up loving Meg with.

It would be better if he didn’t. 

Instead of turning to go as he should, he walks over and sits down in front of her. Her eyes are shut and her breathing is deceptively even but when he reaches out to touch her hand he hears it hitch a little. His fingers curve around her bruised ones and her head lifts to see his eyes on their joined hands. His power shifts, creating a light glow over her skin, healing the bruises and easing the pain, and Abby murmurs, flexing her fingers under his.

“You’re right. We don’t understand fully what it does to our vessels to take you as we do. Angel or demon.” The smile he gives is half-hearted. But the longer she stares, the more it cracks under the weight of his guilt. Not just for her but for what he did to poor devoted Jimmy Novak. A guilt four years ago he would have never felt. “It is why I can’t apologize to you and mean it.”

Her fingers try and pull back but he keeps hold for the sake of contact. “Just don’t… run. Benny and the Winchesters can keep you safe and I don’t like feeling that frustration when you run. I’m too old to chase humans around the continent”

There’s a wryness to her sad smile. “Winchesters take care of that for you, huh?”

“You have only a slight idea,” he agrees and the hand on hers shifts so he can cup her chin. Their eyes lock and his thumb draws a slow circle on her cheek.  “I think you’ve well earned a place in Heaven, if you wonder that. I can tell you about it one day.”

There’s little delight in her expression at his declaration but she’s quieter. “Not right now. I think I’ll stay here a while longer and not think about that I’ve had to suffer for, thanks.”

He could read her if he wanted, to see if she is lying, but he simply nods and stands up again. Her hand slides through his and she lets him pull her up. For the first time he takes control of her grip, keeping her steady against him and they moved out into the cool night air. Her fingers are cold under his and he feels her lean into him a bit for protection from the cold.

 _I’ve been here before_ , he realizes.

Castiel knows how easy it would have been to sink into her comfort again, to lie over her and let her warmth keep him afloat from what he feels like he could drown in. She’d let him too. She even needs that comfort herself. He can feel that the way that Benny can smell it.

But he owes her more than that right now, owes Meg far more than that, so he simply keeps his hold and lets her lean into his shoulder.

“So what are you going to do now?” the girl asks the angel at her shoulder, her body pressing into his for warmth against the biting wind. 

“I don’t know,” the angel answers and his fingers curl over hers to squeeze. She finally looks up at him and he looks down, a slight smile showing through. Her chocolate brown eyes run over his face, that wondering look there once more and he sees her smile just a little in return. Her hand squeezes his back. 

“Well, you can be my guardian angel for now. ‘Cause Benny is going to tear me a new one, you know. He’s worse than my daddy ever was and I’ll need a shield.”

Castiel sees how shaky she is but takes the truce she is offering. “I can do that for you.”

No talk of owing favours or of begrudging protection.

He actually wants to act as a guardian again.

He lets go of her hand and she walks into the house before him, leaving him in Benny’s almost pathetic excuse for a garden. Castiel watches her turn on the lights of the kitchen and then looks up at the sky again. It’s not quite time yet and he knows it, so he simply closes his eyes.

“I do miss you.”

His hands fish into his coat pocket and he pulls out Meg’s necklace from where it has been safely kept, the amulets still hot as if touched by Hellfire itself. He remembers touching them as they laid on her collarbones, feeling their weight as he lay against her searching for comfort against his guilt for what he was doing, and remembers her fingers pressing them into his hand one last time. 

Denying it for so long did him no good, hiding his grief and pain had hurt those he’d come to care for, so Castiel turns it over in his fingers before he drapes the necklace on his own neck so the charms lie flush against his collarbones beneath his shirt. Patting them down, he pushes Meg from his mind and focuses on becoming what he needs to be right now. 

A guardian angel, both Abigail and Meg called him once. 

He’s long overdue to be that again.

 _“That’s my boy,”_ he thinks he hears in his head and he smiles a genuine smile for the first time in a year.


End file.
